Yes, yes they do. I had totally forgotten that incident. A good reminder that royals do have a purpose.
Two dutch soldiers have been captured by the Libyans near Sirt, according to the Dutch government.
Now, there are some European troops in Tunisia, near the Libyan border to organize the evacuation of foreigners (not especially Europeans, but also Egyptians, Asians, etc…), but no explanation was given to my knowledge about how those soldiers ended up in Libya. It was announced as if no such explanation was needed.
So, what were they? Special Ops troops on re a recon mission? Soldiers protecting a contact delegation to the insurgents? Tourists?
Does any Dutch poster know more about this?
ETA : looking at a map, I see that Sirt isn’t anywhere near the Tunisian border. In fact it’s roughly in the middle of the Libyan Mediterranean coast.
Paging Juan Carlos
Looking online I see they were in fact captured last sunday (and the new kept secret until today). They were aboard a Dutch navy chopper that landed in Libya in a secret rescue mission of two Dutch citizens.
Of which side?
Pro-Gaddafi from the reports I am reading. They also say it was three soldiers, no word on the nationals they were trying to rescue.
Yes, three. Latest CNN report here.
This. We talk about democracy and liberty, but these people - who have never really actually experienced it - are dying every day in this cause.
Who among us would throw ourselves in danger’s way for a possible benefit to other people’s children? And yet here they are doing exactly that. We have no. Frickin’. Idea.
With all due respect to the Libyans and just to keep all of the above in perspective, bear in mind that the exact same thing could be said of any mass-based revolution, whether its goal were democracy or theocracy or Communism or fascism or anything else the people fighting for it have never actually experienced.
We don’t know what the goal of this revolution is, beyond getting rid of Gaddafi and some form of “democracy,” and the revolutionaries don’t seem to know either.
And you should be. How long since you were in Libya? Do you have any insight into opinion on the ground there, as to what they want instead of Gaddafi? How much do the people really know about the outside world? Or of anything but Gaddafi’s “socialist” political-economic system? (If they’re largely ignorant, then what they have already accomplished, without leaders and without ideology and without even real-life or theoretical models of other systems before their eyes, is all the more amazing.)
That seems doubtful.
Looking at GDP on Nationmaster, in fact Gaddafi has increased the standard living in Libya. Per Capita GDP in 1969 was US$1994. In 2005, US$7118.
Comparatively, Chavez Banana Land is US$5449, and was US$1550 in 1969.
Taking 1999 as benchmark, V.: US$4105, L.: US$5859.
Whatever hard Left / socialist fuzzy headed thinking exists out there, the two cretins have performed rather similarly.
I haven’t been to Libya for over thirty years. For most of that time I was vaguely embarrassed about being Libyan, embarrassed that we were ruled by a joke - a blatantly crazy, corrupt bastard and embarrassed that my countrymen were apparently content to suffer under his rule and not do anything about it. Whenever people asked where I was from and mentioned Gaddaffi, I’d shrug and give them a wry smile and shake my head, as if to say “yeah, he’s an absolute nut - but what can you do?”
I was so wrong.
I was so ignorant of what it meant to actually live under that kind of fear and brutality - to live in a country where you could literally be hanged in the public square for criticising the government, where you could be grabbed from your home in the middle of the night by secret police and tortured, killed or “disappeared”, with absolutely no hope of justice or mercy. I just didn’t understand what that kind of oppression meant, and now I’m ashamed of my own ignorance, apathy and condescension towards my own people.
I never felt truly Libyan, but now I’ve been utterly humbled, utterly in awe at the sight of everyday Libyans throwing off 42 years of fear and taking their lives in their hands to fight off the monster that’s been preying on them. They’re being cut down in the streets, yet still they continue to fight tooth and nail for their freedom. In the beginning they were virtually unarmed, yet through sheer determination they fought off forces that were far better trained and armed. These aren’t hardened troops - these are shopkeepers, mechanics, students and teachers, and they fought off snipers with rocks. They’ve been shot, blasted and shattered, yet they captured fortified security compounds and have turned captured weapons against their oppressors.
Words can’t express how momentous this really is. While I’m not there, my wife and I both have family there, and what the people want instead of Gadaffi is a free and fair democracy. They want the chance to actually have a say in how their country is run, and they want a government that’s transparent and accountabile to the people, and they want the freedom to speak out or criticise that government without fear.
Right now they don’t really have a plan for how to achieve that - they’re just focused on getting Gaddaffi out first and making sure they don’t run out of bread, water and bullets. Right now the feeling is “we’ll figure it out once he’s gone, but anything is better than Gaddaffi”.
One thing that’s important to point out is that they don’t want to split the country in any way - they want a unified Libya with Tripoli as its capital, and they don’t want (and won’t allow) any form of radical theocracy to fill the power vacuum.
GDP and standard of living are not the same thing.
True enough, but GDP per capita is what we have as an objective data point to ground an evaluation. Leftist hand-waving assertions are not data and are inherently self-serving.
In any case, GDP per capita and standard of living are not possible either to disassociate either.
Libya might have gained more money during Gaddaffi’s rule, but little, if any of that ever went to the people. Instead it went to line his own pockets and those of his cronies. Libya has fantastic natural resources and oil wealth but it’s been turned into a shithole through mismanagement, incompetence and wilful corruption.
I wasn’t saying GAddafi did a great job, I was reacting to the foolish praise to Chavez.
Plenty of mismanagement, incompetence and corruption in Venezuela, too, but nobody can deny it has been Chavez’ consistent, and to great degree effective, policy to spend the oil revenue to improve the lives of the people.
Praising Chavez’ human rights record would be foolish. Praising his general character, demeanor and attitude towards the world would be foolish. Praising his sense-of-persecution-obsessed world-view would be . . . defensible. But praising what he has done for Venezuelans is not foolish; that’s why they keep re-electing him, honestly.
So you assert. I do not credit any of this, but that is not for this thread.
Still so sure? He has the firepower to stay.